B. Media at the service of dialogue with the world

8. The Second Vatican Council underlined the awareness of the People of God that they are "truly and intimately linked with mankind and its history".¹⁵ Those who proclaim God's Word are obliged to heed and seek to understand the "words" of diverse peoples and cultures, in order not only to learn from them but to help them recognize and accept the Word of God. ¹⁶ The Church therefore must maintain an active, listening presence in relation to the world -- a kind of presence which both nurtures community and supports people in seeking acceptable solutions to personal and social problems.

Moreover, as the Church always must communicate its message in a manner suited to each age and to the cultures of particular nations and peoples, so today it must communicate in and to the emerging media culture. ¹⁷ This is a basic condition for responding to a crucial point made by the Second Vatican Council: the emergence of "social, technical, and cultural bonds" linking people ever more closely lends "special urgency" to the Church's task of bringing all to "full union with Christ".¹⁸ Considering how important a contribution the media of social communications can make to its efforts to foster this unity, the Church views them as means "devised under God's Providence" for the promotion of communication and communion among human beings during their earthly pilgrimage. ¹⁹

Thus, in seeking to enter into dialogue with the modern world, the Church necessarily desires honest and respectful dialogue with those responsible for the communications media. On the Church's side this dialogue involves efforts to understand the media -- their purposes, procedures, forms and genres, internal structures and modalities -- and to offer support and encouragement to those involved in media work. On the basis of this sympathetic understanding and support, it becomes possible to offer meaningful proposals for removing obstacles to human progress and the proclamation of the Gospel.

Such dialogue therefore requires that the Church be actively concerned with the secular media, and especially with the shaping of media policy. Christians have in effect a responsibility to make their voice heard in all the media, and their task is not confined merely to the giving out of Church news. The dialogue also involves support for media artists; it requires the development of an anthropology and a theology of communication -- not least, so that theology itself may be more communicative, more successful in disclosing Gospel values and applying them to the contemporary realities of the human condition; it requires that Church leaders and pastoral workers respond willingly and prudently to media when requested, while seeking to establish relationships of mutual confidence and respect, based on fundamental common values, with those who are not of our faith.

Gaudium et Spes, n. 11, in AAS, LVIII (1966), p. 1034.

Cf. PAUL VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 20, in AAS, LXVIII (1976), pp. 18-19.

Cf. Inter Mirifica, n. 3, in AAS, LVI (1964), p. 146.

Lumen Gentium, n. 1, in AAS, LVII (1965), p. 5.

Cf. Communio et Progressio, n. 12, in AAS, LXIII (1971), p. 598.